The Family Heart: A Memoir Of When Our Son Came Out - Hardcover

Dew, Robb Forman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201624508 ISBN 13: 9780201624502

Publisher: Addison Wesley, 1994

Synopsis

The author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death depicts the depths of family love in this recounting of the time when her son told her that he was gay and the events that followed. 75,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Robb Forman Dew is the American Book Award-winning author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death and two other novels, The Time of Her Life and Fortunate Lives, as well as A Southern Thanksgiving. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Reviews

In this affecting and eloquent account of the Dew family members' attempts to come to terms with the homosexuality of the elder son, who came out to his parents while a sophomore at Yale, Stephen emerges as a remarkably resilient and self-aware young man. The emphasis of the book, however, is not on him but on his parents, scrambling to reorient themselves in the wake of a revelation that uncovers prejudices these liberal, educated people did not know they had. Their movement out of bewilderment and into acceptance and activism--the Dews join a network of parents of gays and lesbians and petition for institutional support for gay and lesbian students at the prep schools their sons attended--makes for absorbing, inspiring reading. The author's husband Charles teaches history at Williams College; she is an American Book Award-winning novelist ( Dale Loves Sophie to Death ) whose fiction charts with compassion and nuance the durability of the American family. Dew's memoir complements these qualities with articulate outrage at entrenched homophobia. 40,000 first printing; first serial to Good Housekeeping; QPB selection; audio rights to Simon & Schuster.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A moving and honest account by American Book Award-winning novelist Dew of what she learned when her oldest son came out. Dew (Fortunate Lives, 1992, etc.) perceptively describes how, after finding out that one son was gay, the straight members of her family overcame confusion and grief, eventually arriving at an understanding far beyond tolerance. Like much of the memoir, Dew's evocation of the ``elongated moment'' in which she learned that her son Steve was gay demonstrates her gift for describing the details of unease: ``Steve seemed lost in his own house.... His expression was precisely the curious gaze of assessment he had cast my way thirty minutes after he was born.'' The frankness with which she remembers her own awkwardness, even her most excruciating mistakes, is also admirable and goes far to mitigate the whiff of smug self- congratulation that sometimes creeps into the book. The Family Heart is at its best when Dew is relating her internal monologues. In characterizing her initial grief, for example, she singles out her assumption that Steve won't have children; her fear that if her children never become parents, they will never understand how much she loves them; and her worry that ``if either of my sons didn't have children, how would he ever be able to forgive my failures?'' Dew's use of place is less inspiring. In particular, though her ability to capture the details of her physical environment is masterful, she uses weather as a metaphor for emotion so often that it quickly becomes a predictable and tiresome device. Despite stylistic lapses and a few bursts of preachiness, a reflective exploration of a mother's struggle with her attitudes toward homosexuality and a family's negotiation of difference. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Novelist Dew's clean, elegant prose traces the denial, disbelief, grief, and rage at the inequities of society she and her liberal, educated husband, Charles, experienced when their elder son told them he was gay. As she moves through stages of acceptance of the revelation, from compulsively stringing yards of popcorn for Christmas decoration (in May) to joining Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, her journey moves beyond that of her own family to become the reader's journey within the complexities of family interrelationships and love. As she probes the depths of her feelings, confronting her own stereotypical ideas and limitations as well as those of the surrounding community, acknowledging her ignorance of the range of sexuality, and discovering new facets of caring within herself in the face of her disappointment and grief, she re-lives and examines key moments in her past. She finds in herself greater awareness, flexibility, compassion, and acceptance, and she builds stronger bonds with her son, husband, other family members, friends, colleagues, and community. Her story is of a coming-out on many levels. Whitney Scott

Dew, an American Book Award winner, recalls the moment when her son Stephen told her he was gay and chronicles the journey she and her family made from confusion to commitment.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison Wesley
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0201624508
• ISBN 13: 9780201624502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 229